“Knock, Knock!”

“Who’s there?”

“Dis”

“Dis who?”

“Dis is da disclaimer dat’s who.”

“Pippin, that is the worst joke I’ve ever heard,” Frodo groaned.

“Well, then you think of one,” Pippin said.  “This is supposed to be a disclaimer with a joke included and that’s all I’ve got, really.  What do you have?”

“Never mind,” Frodo sighed.

“You don’t have anything, do you?”  Pippin grinned.

“No,” Frodo admitted in annoyance.

“Very well, then we'll just have to use mine,”  Pippin said importantly.   “If this story offends you, sounds familiar, seems to have characters in it that belong to someone else, isn’t amusing, isn’t properly formatted, doesn’t make sense on any level, is riddled with poor spelling and grammatical errors, has no plot, gives you nightmares, makes you break out in hives, sends you screaming from the room, causes your computer to crash, makes you hungry, or offends your sensibilities in any way, the author cannot be held responsible.  That is because we’ve posted this disclaimer and that covers everything.”

“You’ve left something important out,” Frodo objected.

“Me?  Right?  I’m not yet featured in the prologue,” Merry said.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Frodo frowned.  

“Then what did you mean, Frodo?” Pippin asked.

“You left out the portion of the prologue in which you inform the reader that the author isn’t making any money on this story,” Frodo said.

“I would think that part would be obvious,” Merry objected.

“How so?” Frodo frowned.

“It’s not worth the time it took to type it.  Who’d pay for it?  Anyone with half a brain knows that no one made a single penny on this,” Merry said.

“I suppose that’s true,” Frodo agreed.

“It may be true, but I still have to include that part,” Pippin said.

“Why?” Merry asked.

“Because, how do we know that the folks reading this have half a brain?  For all we know, the only folks reading this are, well, you know, less-than clever shall we say?” Pippin pointed out.

“Good thinking, Pip,” Merry said.  “Go ahead and do the part about the money because you just never know who is reading this sort of thing.”

“And so, in conclusion,” Pippin said.  “It is my responsibility to let you know that no one, especially the person that wrote this, is making any money at all for it.  The entire thing was written and posted for free, which when you think about it, seems completely mad.”

“Try not to think about it, Pip,” Merry frowned.  “Just get on with it.”

“Right,” Pippin nodded.  “That’s it, really.  No one got paid.  We aren’t responsible for anything that goes wrong with anything and the characters in the story weren’t created by the so-called author that posted this.”

“You should mention the name of the author that did create the characters,” Frodo suggested.

“Don’t people know that already?” Pippin asked.

“Some folks don’t read the classics, Pip,” Merry sighed.

“That’s terrible!”  

“But it’s true,” Merry said.

“Fine,” Pippin frowned.  “For any of you unfortunate folks that haven’t had the time or made the effort to read the *real* book and have been living under a rock somewhere and won’t really know this; the characters, including me, in this story are borrowed, and I use that term loosely, from the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.”

“I think that does it,” Merry smiled.

“Splendid.  Now all of those folks out there that haven’t read the real book, turn off your computers now, get up from your chairs, and go to the book store or the library and get a copy of J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and read it instead of wasting your time on this kind of stuff,” Pippin advised.  

“Well said,” Frodo smiled.

“I knew you’d approve of that,” Merry said rolling his eyes.  “You’re in the real book much more than you are in this story.”

Frodo continued to smiled.  “That, Meriadoc, is why the real book is considered to be a classic.”

GW           05-24-2009